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posted by Jen | 10:48 AM
Much to my husband's liking, we recieved our new desktop yesterday - three days earlier than Dell promised. I was able to check my e-mail for the first time in 3 weeks. He, of course, proceeded to spend hours downloading and test driving a beta version of a new Star Wars game. I looked for laptops for an hour or so - I'm thinking of getting a refurbished laptop. It's a pretty good deal, assuming that the thing works, of course.
I'm totally bummed today because Sarah and Jason traded in their unused season tickets for seats at Saturday's game, and I can't go. Gavin and I will be in College Station to see Lauren and Melissa and see the A&M - Kansas State game. Not that I'm complaining about getting to go to a college football game, but I would be more mollified at missing a critical game in the wild card race if it was the Huskies I was going to see. UT is a worthy opponent - come play them Dawgs!
In other news, SpaceShip One just made it to outer space. They're intending to make the second flight in an attempt to win the X-prize on October 4. The team that builds it doesn't seem to be too concerned with the fact that the control system malfunctions pretty much every flight. I'm worried that one of these times, the pilot won't be able to correct it in time to maintain control. Burt Rutan was quoted in the Chronicle as saying about the corkscrewing motion observed on this flight "I was worried about that because that's not the way it was supposed to be." Duh! If the shuttle started doing barrel rolls on ascent everybody in the control center would have kittens. It's a testament to Rutan's design's flexibility that it can handle that kind of abuse, but I would think they'd go into overdrive to figure out these roll excursions before they put another guy in the cockpit. But then, they're a private company and they can get away with a lot more risk than NASA can for whatever reason that is.
I'm totally bummed today because Sarah and Jason traded in their unused season tickets for seats at Saturday's game, and I can't go. Gavin and I will be in College Station to see Lauren and Melissa and see the A&M - Kansas State game. Not that I'm complaining about getting to go to a college football game, but I would be more mollified at missing a critical game in the wild card race if it was the Huskies I was going to see. UT is a worthy opponent - come play them Dawgs!
In other news, SpaceShip One just made it to outer space. They're intending to make the second flight in an attempt to win the X-prize on October 4. The team that builds it doesn't seem to be too concerned with the fact that the control system malfunctions pretty much every flight. I'm worried that one of these times, the pilot won't be able to correct it in time to maintain control. Burt Rutan was quoted in the Chronicle as saying about the corkscrewing motion observed on this flight "I was worried about that because that's not the way it was supposed to be." Duh! If the shuttle started doing barrel rolls on ascent everybody in the control center would have kittens. It's a testament to Rutan's design's flexibility that it can handle that kind of abuse, but I would think they'd go into overdrive to figure out these roll excursions before they put another guy in the cockpit. But then, they're a private company and they can get away with a lot more risk than NASA can for whatever reason that is.
4 Comments:
Ok. I was panicking when I saw it start rolling. And all the TV commentaters said was something like "hmm." I was freaking out!
Man, I can't believe I missed this. I'm guessing it was live and they had much better video than last time.
Hmm. Since I'm at home, maybe I can find a video clip online. :)
Yeah, it looked like Genesis when it started rolling -- I was way more freaked out about it than the commentators afterword that were casually mentioning some "uncommanded maneuvers." It was much better broadcasted than the previous one, lots of speeches and cameras AND it was on NASA TV.
Don't worry, Gavin, I missed it, too. Personally, I liked Jen's description - "If the shuttle started doing barrel rolls on ascent everybody in the control center would have kittens." Hee hee, that's great. Maybe that's why there are so many cats in MCC-M...
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